Here are two more data points from the weekend to back up my argument that the 2012 Republican nomination is not Sarah Palin’s to lose. First, the Values Voter Summit straw poll, a decent gauge of sentiment among the kind of activists Palin would presumably need to rally, in which the former Alaska governor racked up just 7 percent of the vote, trailing Mike Pence (who gave a barn-burner of a speech), Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Second, a new 2012 poll from Public Policy Polling, showing Romney leading with 22 percent, followed by Huckabee at 21, Gingrich at 18, and Palin at 17 percent. And note this statistic:
As is the case every month Sarah Palin is the most personally popular of the Republicans, with 66 percent viewing her favorably. She is followed by Huckabee at 60 percent and Gingrich and Romney at 57 percent.
The problem for Palin is that a smaller percentage of the people who like her personally support her for President than any of the other Republicans. 37 percent of the voters who like Romney also say he’s their choice for the 2012 nomination and the same is true for 32 percent who like Gingrich and Huckabee. But just 24 percent who see Palin positively on a personal level translate that to intent to vote for her. [emphasis mine — R.D.]
About a month ago, I wrote a column arguing that the most interesting pre-primary contest in the G.O.P. was arguably the battle to see if somebody (a Mitch Daniels? a Jon Thune? a Haley Barbour? a Tim Pawlenty?) would manage to unseat Romney from his perch as the safe, competent-seeming, establishment-y candidate. In response, Commentary’s Jennifer Rubin argued that I was missing the point, and that being perceived as having anything to do with the G.O.P. establishment would doubtless be the kiss of death of 2012. (“The party elders, for better or worse, are being ignored,” she wrote. “Ask [Marco] Rubio, Rand Paul, Nikki Haley, Sharon Angle, and the rest if endorsements by the establishment and big-name donors are the key to victory.”)
This is true in a sense: Obviously nobody’s going to run for president in ‘12 saying “I am the voice of the Republican establishment!”, and no candidate can hope to win the nomination if they’re perceived as a Mike Castle or Lisa Murkowski-style figure. But right now, in autumn 2010, at what seems like a moment of maximal populist outrage and anti-establishment fervor, Sarah Palin can’t crack 20 percent in primary polling, and Mitt Romney (for all his manifold weaknesses) still has the most plausible path to the nomination. Which suggests to me that concerns about stability, solidity and electability may play a bigger role in the 2012 Republican campaign than many observers seem to think.
No comments:
Post a Comment